In digital video processing and storage applications, packetized video data is typically encoded with ancillary information for use in locating, decoding and navigating through encoded image data. In a Digital Video Disk (DVD) type application, ancillary data in the form of volume/file structure data and navigation data contains information for use in locating data and navigating through different image sequences. Volume/file structure information uses one or more file directories in defining file structures for use in locating and recovering data from a storage medium, for example. Navigation data additionally locates and links sections of video/audio program data for use in navigating through image sequence in different modes of operation, for example. In normal program play mode a first sequence of images is located, linked and processed for play by a DVD player and in another mode a different sequence of images is processed to provide a different scene or camera angle, for example. However, such ancillary file structure and navigation information may be encoded in different data formats in accordance with different encoding standards and applications. A program encoded with file structure and navigation data according to one standard for read-only DVD applications may be incompatible with the navigation data structure and content requirements of a different standard such as a recordable DVD format, for example. As a result a recordable format DVD disk may not be playable by a read-only DVD player or a program encoded for read-only DVD format may not be directly stored by a recordable DVD player, and vice versa.
In addition, the content and format of existing file structure and navigation data structures for DVD and other applications are limited and do not adequately support advanced decoder navigation features for multimedia and other applications. Advanced decoder navigation features include, for example, trick play operation (such as reverse, fast forward, freeze-frame etc.), image manipulation (involving linking images out of sequence and from different programs), and navigation in a multi-windowed composite image display containing different video programs or other multimedia application images. Such multimedia picture-in-picture (PIP) type images may comprise, for example, Internet web pages, electronic program guides, Email, telephone, fax, video-phone, home appliance control images as well as video program images. These deficiencies and derivative deficiencies are addressed by a system according to the present invention. Specifically, a system according to the invention addresses the problems involved in generating, processing and formatting ancillary volume/file structure and navigation data to be compatible with different data encoding standards and to support advanced multimedia navigation features.